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Dr. Park Seung-il (second from left)

Asan Medical Center in Seoul announced on Nov. 15 that it had conducted the first living lung transplant surgery in South Korea on Oct. 21. This is a surgery in which part of a lung is removed from a living individual and transplanted into another patient. Both the donors and the recipient are enjoying a quick recovery, the hospital reported. But since living lung transplants are not permitted by the current law, some are arguing that the law needs to be revised.

As explained by the hospital, the living lung transplant was performed on a female patient in her twenties who had lost all lung function because of end-stage pulmonary hypertension. She was diagnosed with severe trouble with her lung function in 2014, and her heart even stopped in July 2016. After that, she applied to receive a lung from a brain-dead patient, but no lungs were available, bringing her to death’s door. According to documents from the National Organ Transplant Center, the average waiting time for receiving a lung from a brain-dead patient in South Korea is 1,456 days.

The portions of the lung were donated by the patient’s parents, who were released from the hospital six days after the operation. In August, the family posted on the Blue House’s e-People online petition system asking for permission to have a living lung transplant. As it currently stands, South Korea’s Organ Transplantation Act permits living transplants of the kidney, liver and pancreas, but not the lung.

Along with this, the transplantation team at Asan asked the hospital’s clinical research review board and its medical ethics board, and later the Korean Society for Thoracic Surgery and the Korean Society for Transplantation, to consider the medical ethics of a living lung transplant. The team received positive responses from the Korean Society for Thoracic Surgery and the other groups.

South Korea’s first living lung transplant involved removing portions of the lung from the two donors and transplanting them into the patient. Just as a patient with lung cancer can have a normal life even after part of their lung has been removed, this operation does not pose any major obstacles to the lung donors going about their daily life.

The fact that this living lung transplant surgery is not permitted by the Organ Transplantation Act could create controversy. “If a living lung transplant can save a patient without causing harm to the donor, it will be necessary to revise the law in question,” said an official from the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

“There will need to be a discussion about redefining the scope of organs for which living transplants are permitted in a committee that brings together experts in medicine and ethics,” the official added.

By Kim Yang-joong, medical correspondent

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